The Hepworth Family Gift, which forms a central part of the gallery's permanent collection, consists of 44 working models (surviving prototypes in plaster and aluminium from which editions of bronze were cast) including Winged Figure, 1961-2; five drawings made in 1925 and a large group of Hepworth's lithographs and screenprints. Also in the Gift is a group of works by artist friends formerly owned by Hepworth, including paintings by John Wells and Breon O'Casey and ceramics by Janet Leach.

David Hockney's etching The Student: Homage to Picasso, which was Art Funded in 1973, is the Yorkshire artist's official acknowledgement of the influence on his work of Picasso. In the picture, Hockney approaches the Spaniard, whose head is represented as a sculpture mounted on a column, in the manner of a student carrying his portfolio for inspection.